amd athelon install

[Jude DaShiell]

This athelon machine runs at a speed of 1.5 gigs and won't successfully 
install any form of linux I've tried on it at all.  I think the machine is 
probably broken.  fedora core 3 fails just afterr I tell it to skip the 
media test speech goes away and use of key that alternately kills then 
revives speakup fails although the problem may be the keyboard that has 
something like 12 small buttons above all of the keys.  I'll try changing 
a more oorthodox keyboard out and see if that gets me any further.  The 
machine is a Gateway too with the big metal g on its top.  Slackware 10.0 
and sarge debian have also failed though the 2004 sarrge debian gets 
furtheer than the 2005 version for some reason.  All I hear is the double 
talk message then everything goes silent on 2005 but oon 2004 I got down 
to partition disks before it died.  Hopefully I'll learn more this 
Wednesday when I can get a tech check the machine out.  Almost forgot is 
there anything special I can put on the boot line other than text 
speakup_synth=ltlk?